farmlet.co.nz

A while back, we decided to purchase an electric dehydrator. This was a tricky decision for us, intent as we are on cutting back on electricity use. We decided to get the electric dehydrator because it is much more energy-efficient than our electric oven when it comes to drying food. Ideally, we would use the sun for drying extra food, but in a humid and changeable climate such as this, open-air solar dehydration is difficult or impossible much of the time. I have seen designs for solar dehydrators that would work here, at least on fine dry summer days. It would be fun to experiment with one of these at some stage. Also, once we install a wood-burning stove in our kitchen-living room (yes, this step is on our medium-term “to do” list), we will be able to use it to dehydrate food, as well as for cooking and drying laundry during the winter. In short, we hope we will be able to cut down our use of the electric dehydrator as we implement further improvements here on the Farmlet. In the mean time, it seems like a relatively energy-efficient method of preserving and preparing certain kinds of food.

Austrian Hull-Less Pumpkin Seeds

Once the dehydrator arrived, our first project was to dry the Austrian hull-less pumpkin seeds that we grew last year. (We attempted to dry the first of these in the sun late last summer, and ended up having to finish them in the electric oven when the weather changed.) We were relieved to find that all but one of the pumpkins were in fine condition, despite many months of storage. It took quite a while to pick all the seeds out of the twelve pumpkins we had saved, but it was gratifying to see the quantity of plump green seed yielded from each fruit. We washed and soaked the seeds overnight in brine, before spreading them on the dehydrator trays. We were pleased to note how quickly they dried (a few hours at 60 degrees centigrade).

Now Kevin and I are both enjoying these tasty and nutritious treats. We look forward to growing more of these delicious seeds in the garden this summer.

A bit more information about the dehydrator:

*We purchased the dehydrator second-hand off Trademe (New Zealand’s equivalent of Ebay). I was able to get a good deal on one with a broken lid, since one of my cousins happens to have a spare lid for this kind of dehydrator.

*It is a “Harvest Maid” dehydrator (the 1,500 watt model), in good condition other than the lid! It can work at temperature settings up to 70 degrees centigrade.

*On my cousin’s advice, we got one with lots of trays. We will give some of these to her in exchange for the lid! Having more trays will allow us to dry more items at once, for greater energy efficiency. Slicing the food nice and thin will also help cut down on electricity use.

There are a number of other dehydrator projects that we are hoping to try when the time is right. We’ll let you know how they work out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Food and Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.